How to Meal Prep Faster by Thinking Like a Chef
- Jen Vondenbrink
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
And voila! Dinner is served!
Have you been to Disney World? It is completely different than your regular life where you are stressed about getting dinner on the table after a crazy day. Stepping onto the property, you are instantly transported to a different reality. Things are clean. People are nice. And most of the time everything seems to work effortlessly.
It can feel like that when you go out for dinner as well. You sit down. Get a drink. Order dinner. Chat. It comes. You eat and enjoy. You finish with some coffee. In a couple of hours, you’ve had a complete experience that most of the time feels effortless, like going to Disney.
If you compare that to your last Thanksgiving dinner, it couldn’t look any different. There you are sweating away in the kitchen. People asking when dinner is going to be ready. You’ve been working for hours (if not days), and then you sit down to a warmish dinner, and everyone is done in 20 minutes and is asking for dessert. Really? It feels like you just sat down!
Let's learn how to make meal prep faster by using some chef tips:
They know exactly how long dishes take to prepare
They have a system in place
They work prep into their plan
Why your brain plays tricks on you during meal prep
Did you know that your brain isn’t really good at estimating time? You say to yourself something will only take you five minutes, and 30 minutes later you are still at it. That is why we need to really investigate and even make notes of how long things take us until we retrain our brain.
My Mom was famous for telling us dinner would be in 15 minutes, and we would actually eat 45 minutes later. You could almost count on it. Why did she do this?
My Mom loved to cook and experiment with recipes. Dinner was never boring. But that meant she didn’t always know how long things would take to cook or even prep.
Chefs have to know how long everything takes to prep and cook. They know your fish takes 5 minutes to cook. For it to come to your table hot, it can’t be cooked 15 minutes ahead of time.
Understanding these timings comes with practice and experience. If you want to see this in action, check out this episode from Bon Appétit here on YouTube where they follow the Executive Chef of The Modern, a fine-dining restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
When you watch the episode, you’ll notice the intense focus all the chefs have during “service” to ensure your dinner is served on time and prepared correctly.
Let’s go back to prepping and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Do you think about all the prep ahead of time, or do you only think about cooking on the day? As I was writing the first edition of my Thanksgiving guide, it was just a collection of recipes. In talking with people, I realized yes, the recipes help, but they were really struggling with bringing it all together…timing.
So, I walked through an entire Thanksgiving prep, timed each step, and wrote the revision, which I continue to refine. I think we are on version 4 at this time.
You may not be cooking for hundreds of people tonight, but the concept stays the same. Do you know how long it will take to prep and cook dinner? Is there any prep you can do ahead of time? All of these things make a difference if you want to have yummy dinners on the table quickly at the end of the day.
How chefs make high-stress dinners look easy and how to meal prep faster
A system helps you repeat what works and helps you save time.
Chefs live by systems. Again, if you watch the video above, you’ll see they have a language to keep each other updated, they have systems of putting plates up when an order is called so that they know they need to prepare 4 more of that dish, and they have a system in place prior to service that ensures they have what they need.
Let’s go back to cooking Thanksgiving dinner again. To get dinner on the table at the right time, and without a lot of stress on your part, you need a system. What can be prepped ahead? Did you know that you could get all the fixin’s for apple pie at least a month in advance?* One thing checked off the shopping list.
When coaching my Inner Circle members, we always talk about their system.
What do they have in their pantry?
How are they organizing their refrigerators and freezers?
Are they letting things spoil because they actually forgot they had them because they were buried in the refrigerator? What is their plan for the leftovers - freeze them, make them into another dish, just repeat the dish tomorrow?
I’m not saying you have to have all the answers to the questions above, but if you want to make dinners, especially big dinners, less stressful, asking these questions and getting a system in place will help.
But, I don’t have time to cook
We’ve talked about knowing how long things take and having a system. Reality hits when you have to implement everything, especially prep. Making time to prep allows you to get healthy dinners on the table fast, especially during the week.
Think about when you say you don’t have time to make dinner. Most of the time it isn’t that you don’t have time to cook, but instead you don’t have time to prep. So you opt for pre-made meals where the prep is done, and all you have to do is pop it in the oven or microwave.
I’m not opposed to that, and I actually prep meals ahead of time and have them in the freezer just for this reason. If I haven’t planned my prep, I certainly don’t want to start a dish from scratch, so I pull out a serving-sized portion of premade lasagna that I put together but didn’t cook from the freezer.
Shifting your thinking from “I have to prep everything tonight” to doing prep even weeks in advance like I did for the lasagna, helps you benefit on those busy nights.
Chefs actually spend way more time on prep than on actually cooking your meal.
In Netflix's show “On the Line,” you will notice that the chefs are in the kitchen early in the morning even if dinner doesn’t start until 5:00 pm. That is to do prep.
How to bring that Disney-level magic to your own kitchen table
So no, getting dinner on the table isn’t Disney magic. It is based on three things - understanding how long things take to cook and prep, having a system, and then actually doing the prep. When you become intentional about your meal prep and cooking, things start to flow.
Over time, you learn how long things take to cook and prep, you refine your system, and you do your prep, so when someone asks, “When is dinner?” you can confidently say it will be ready in 15 minutes and have it on the table in 15 minutes.
What is your next step? Start by figuring out how long it takes you to prep and cook your favorite dish or even dinner tonight. Grab a notebook and keep it in the kitchen. This will be a huge resource in the future.
Read next: How to Host without Headaches
*Here’s a tip: apples for apple pie are even better when you get them ahead of time, even a month or two in advance. It allows them to slightly dry out and helps reduce the moisture in your pie. Just keep them in the crisper in the fridge, and you will have them ready when you need them.
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